ABSTRACT
With the 2011 decision of Canada and Russia to join the United States of America (USA) in taking a more passive role in global climate change politics, climate change negotiations run the risk of moving to the back-burner of international politics. This chapter looks at leadership and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDRRC). Leadership is an attractive concept for three reasons. First, it is a positive framing of responsibility as opposed to the use of words such as polluter and/or liability. Second, in an anarchic world, leadership is needed to address collaboration, as opposed to cooperation, problems. Third, if leadership could lead to the articulation of 'no-regrets' options and technological and market solutions, this would benefit all countries and lead to a win-win situation. Leadership and the CBDRRC principle were developed at a time when the world was moving from a tri-polar set-up of first, second and third worlds, to a developed-developing country bi-polar set-up.
